Welcome home, chicks!

We got a call Tuesday late afternoon that they were waiting for us at the post office in Omaha. They’d travelled to us all the way from Ohio on the first full day of their hatched lives with a heat pack to stay warm in this box:

There are six of them, and they live in our guest bedroom at the moment, until they get real feathers and can be moved outside (into the chicken tractor that I will build sometime before they need it… note to self: get on that one). They don’t have names yet, but let me introduce you anyway.

Here are our two Golden Campines (the tortoise shell ones), with one of our two Blue Hamburgs in the center (the little black girl):

Here are our two Dominiques:

And this is our other Blue Hamburg:

While we were not shocked that our Blue Hamburgs weren’t blue, that one is yellow and one is black made us think maybe we’d gotten the wrong chicks! But no, there is just a lot of variation in coloration for their breed.

We picked our breeds so they’d all be good egg layers, good foragers, winter hardy, small, and pretty. And they’re all Heritage breeds in either the Critical or Watch categories.

Like all babies, they spend their time sleeping and eating mostly. One second they’re pecking at the ground, the next they’ve gone to sleep. It is like they fall under a spell, suddenly unable to support their bodies with their legs, suddenly unable to support their heads with their necks, melting into a sleeping chick puddle.

Goodnight, chicks!